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Visiting Scholars

The Institute welcomes a number of Scholars each year, whose research is in fields relevant to the Institute. Brief profiles are given for each as well as approximate dates of stay.

2015-2016

Visiting Scholars 2015-2016

S.A. Smythe is a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing (CCWW) at the IMLR and currently completing a PhD in History of Consciousness called L'Italia Meticcia: Belonging and Blackness in Postcolonial Italy along with concentrations in Literature and Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. During her stay at the IMLR, she will further explore themes of migritude, blackness, and gender identity in 20th- and 21st century Italian-East African writing. [October 2015-June 2016]

2014-2015

Visiting Scholars 2014-2015

Ann-Christin Bolay is a Sylvia Naish Visiting Scholar at the Institute. She is writing a PhD on 'Heroization strategies in the biographies of the Stefan George Circle’ at the Collaborative Research Center 948 'Heroes – Heroizations – Heroisms’ at the University of Freiburg/Germany. During her stay she will be studying the Institute’s archive materials relating to the German author and literary scholar Friedrich Gundolf. As one of the most important members and biographers of the George Circle, he had an important influence on the Circle’s veneration of heroes. Her main focus is the question of how this veneration is constructed through narrative strategies. [September-October 2014]

2013-2014

Visiting Scholars 2013-2014

Carmen Donia is a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory (CCM) and a member of the Department of Linguistic and Literary Studies at the University of Padua. Her PhD project concerns encyclopedism and vernacular Aristotelianism in the XVIth Academies of the Venetian Republic. During her stay at the IGRS she will explore the relationship between language and visual memory in the Accademia degli Infiammati (1540-45), focusing on the work by Giuseppe Betussi (1512 - around 1573). She was awarded the Vittore Branca Scholarship at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and carried out research at the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice. She has published an essay and run conferences on Renaissance Italian studies. [September-December 2013 / March-May 2014]

Valérie Lebrun is a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing at the Institute (CCWW) and is pursuing a PhD in the Department of Literature Studies at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM) along with a concentration in Feminist Studies at the Institut de recherches et d’études féministes (IREF). During her stay at the IMLR, she will develop her work on what she calls 'Antigone’s Girls' to theorize the link between tragic performance in the voices of female figures and the renewal of love discourses in contemporary women's writing. She is especially interested in the works of Christine Angot, Nelly Arcan, Camille Laurens and Catherine Mavrikakis. [January-June 2014]

Fabiana Loparco is a Visiting Scholar at the Institute's Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory (CCM) and a doctoral student in History of Education at the University of Macerata (CESCO). She is conducting research on the periodical press for children in Italy between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She is the author of one volume about children and war, The Corriere dei Piccoliand World War I, and other articles published in international journals. During her stay at the IGRS, she will explore the history of English and Italian children’s periodical press during the late 19th century as an important means in understanding National educational processes. [September 2013]

Victoria Richardson is a Visiting Scholar at the Institute's Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women's Writing at the Institute (CCWW), and a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on contemporary French women's writing and the visual arts. Whilst at the IMLR, she will develop her research into the writers Marie NDiaye and Marie Darrieussecq, with particular focus on sense perception and the role of the visual arts in their work. [October 2013-July 2014]

Jenny Watson is a Sylvia Naish Visiting Postgraduate Scholar at the Institute and is writing a PhD at Swansea University entitled ‘Metaphor, Memory and the Weight of History in the Writing of Herta Müller’. Whilst at the IGRS, she will develop her work on Müller and the legacy of National Socialism to investigate the transnational nature of literature concerned with the Nazi past. The primary focus of this research will be the production of Väterliteratur and other texts of generational conflict in Romania during the 1960s-1980s. [October-November 2013 – tbc]

2012-2013

Visiting Scholars 2012-2013

Dana Bönisch lectures as a Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Bonn. Her PhD project explores narratives of terror(ism) from the 1970s until the 'war on terror'. During her stay at the IGRS, she will explore the notion of geopoetics and the role of spatiality and visuality in this context.She has published a novel and short fiction, occasionally works as a freelance cultural critic, and lives in Cologne. [September 2012-May 2013]

2011-2012

Visiting Scholars 2011-2012

Jennifer Clare is a Junior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory. She studied Cultural Sciences, Literature and Musicology at the University of Hildesheim, and is currently working on a PhD project on the interplay of writing and political, social and cultural action within the literature of the German Student Movement. Her main research interests focus on the sociology of literature, especially the interrelation of literature and political violence, such as terrorism or revolution. At the IGRS, her project will deal with references to Vormärz and the 1848 revolution in fiction and literary discourse around 1968 in Germany. [February-April 2012]

Anika Meier is a Junior Visiting Fellow at the IGRS. She studied German literature and art history at the University of Heidelberg, and is currently writing her dissertation on 'Poetry of Silence. Stefan George’s Images as a Paradigm of Aesthetic Conservatism'. She is also a Fellow at the Centre Allemand d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris, and co-editor of artefakt - Zeitschrift für junge Kunstgeschichte und Kunst. [February/March 2012]

Catherine Moir is a Sylvia Naish Postgraduate Fellow at the Institute. She is currently completing a PhD entitled 'Religion without God? Towards a Blochian Critique of East German Folk Atheism' at the University of Sheffield's Centre for Ernst Bloch Studies. She has published on the translation of religious texts and on religion and atheism in the former East Germany. During her fellowship, she will work in collaboration with Johan Siebers on the relationship between translation and Utopia. [November 2011]

Directory of Experts

This Directory is the first stop for anyone seeking experts or further information about projects or research resources in, or in collaboration with, the Institute of Modern Languages Research. Browse our staff and fellows: